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REMARKS 

OF 

/ 

HON. EDWARD 0. W0LC0TT, 

OF COLORADO, 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 1898. 



WASHING-TOX. 
1898. 



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EEMAEKS 

OF 

HON. EDWARD 0. WOLCOTT. 



The Senate having under consideration the joint resolution (S. R. 149) for 
the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding that 
the Government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the 
Island of Cuba, and to withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and 
Cuban waters, and directing the President of the United States to use the 
land and naval forces of the United States to carry these resolutions into 
effect- 
Mr. WOLCOTT said: 

Mr. President: It had not been my intention to participate in 
the slightest degree in this debate until some of the reflections 
upon the Chief Executive of this nation were uttered yesterday; 
and they have led me, in view -of the fact that I intend now to 
vote for the joint resolution of the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions, to desire to publicly disassociate myself utterly and wholly 
from any of those discreditable insinuations. 

In my opinion, Mr. President, the great mass of the people of 
this nation do not desire war, if they can avoid it; but they see 
no way how, under the providence of God, it may be averted. 
The people of these United States have stood and stand to-day 
loyally by the President. His position, frictional and difficult at 
best, has been administered by him as became an incumbent of 
that high office. Brave himself, he abhors war; but he abhors 
unrighteousness more. He nas dealt in most courageous fashion 
with that popular clamor which would have been so easy for him 
to follow — a popular clamor natural and patriotic and loyal, but 
necessarily uninformed and unreasoning. He has been compelled 
to contend with the disgraceful conduct and utterances of a de- 
graded journalism which has, I regret to say, found influence 
among those in high station — a journalism which would cheer- 
fully and gladly plunge this country into war to-morrow if it 

could increase its circulation a few copies. 

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He has had to contend with the impassioned utterances which 
have taken place in hoth Houses of Congress; utterances, Mr. 
President, which we have no right to criticise. The Senate is an 
open forum where every man is responsible only to his conscience 
for what he says, and if his utterances make the task of diplomacy 
more difficult, we must accept it as one of the feattires of our in- 
stitutions, and we must seek to be so strong in other directions 
that we can overcome the evils which may grow from them. 

All these influences in these long and arduous and trying and 
difficult days the President of the United States has met with tbat 
splendid conservatism which comes to all good men when respon- 
sibility and power are imposed upon them. He has met them not 
alone with the courage of a man who has known the smoke of battle, 
but he has met them with the fortitude and courage of the Chris- 
tian who desires to save, if possible, the lives of every American 
committed to his charge; and, Mr. President, that confidence and 
that affection and that respect have been reflected for weeks in 
the forbearance and tolerance and courtesy of this body through- 
out all these trying weeks. 

If there have been one or two discordant notes; if, as we stand 
on the threshold of war, which we have practically already crossed, 
there has been heard among the Senators in this Chamber a reflec- 
tion upon the character and motives of him who is the beloved 
President of our whole people and whom the Constitution creates 
the Commander in Chief of our armies and our navies, it will only 
serve to emphasize and deepen the practical unanimity with which 
all good men look up to the President and the desire we all cherish 
in this awful crisis to strengthen his hand. 

After weeks of diplomacy, unfortunately unsuccessful, the Presi- 
dent turned over to Congress the two subjects which he had been 
considering — the subject of the barbarities in Cuba and of the dis- 
aster to our battle ship. It is a great pity that he could not longer 
have kept them; but the avenues of diplomacy were closed to him. 
It is a pity, because under our institutions and under our procedure 
Congress deals with these questions as men in mass meeting. The 
finesse of diplomacy is unknown to us. We can speak only from 
our hearts and for the people we represent: and our debates, which 

may prejudice us in the minds of the people of Europe, are the 
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essential and the necessary channel through which, as representa- 
tives of the people, we make known onr views when public duty 
is devolved upon us. 

If the two subjects could have been presented separately, if they 
had occurred separately, we might perhaps have saved the neces- 
sity of war. If the awful barbarities in Cuba, extending over 
three years, which have aroused the sensibilities and the pity of 
all mankind, could have stood alone, it is possible, though not 
probable, that by peaceful methods we could have met a solution 
of this difficulty. 

For myself, Mr. President, however much of expenditure or 
debt or outlay it might have entailed, I would far rather have 
voted right and left and mortgaged the property, and thus neces- 
sarily mortgaged the labor, of every citizen of the United States 
to a reasonable extent if that would have secured peace in Cuba. 
It might have been successfully accomplished, although it seems 
as if Spain would not, and could not. yield that which is the essen- 
tial condition of our ceasing our insistence. 

But. Mr. President, when added to that there came the awful 
explosion in the harbor of Havana, a friendly port, in time of 
peace, the die was cast. After that, what could be said? If that 
had stood alone, it is possible it might have been adjusted without 
war, but not by any method which the Spaniard has yet attempted. 
When such an outrage was committed there was but one duty 
left, and that was the duty of exculpation, if they could excul- 
pate themselves. If not, the only course of a self-respecting peo- 
ple must be to invoke the god of battle. 

Mr. President, from the day of that awful disaster until now, 
except the most perfunctory regrets, the most formal messages 
to our Government and our people, there have been no steps 
taken either to exculpate Spain or to fix the guilt of the offenders. 
Mr. President, taking the two happenings together, what can re- 
sult but war? 

For the disaster to our battle ship we want no money. There is 

nothing that can repair our wrong. Yes; one thing. If Spain 

would free Cuba to-day, we would offer up our 260 sailors as an 

offering upon the altar of Cuban freedom. 

But, Mr. President, because of that disaster unatoned for and 
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unexplained, the determination is burned into the hearts of the 
American people that war must come or Cuba be made free and 
independent. No other answer will be accepted. 

Mr. President, this national honor which we evoke is intangi- 
ble, it is inchoate, it is unwritten and unexpressed, but it has 
within it the force and the violence of the whirlwind and the 
storm. It is "that chastity of honor which feels a stain like a 
wound." The existence of it makes nations survive and fit to 
live. The loss of it, or the trading upon it, or the abandonment 
of it, makes nations lit to die and perish from the face of the 
earth. 

It is for these reasons, Mr. President, that good men, hating 
war and loving peace, can see no way under heaven whereby war 
may now be avoided. At the outset it is fitting for us in advance 
to pledge ourselves that the statements we make to Europe and to 
mankind are true — that this is a war for liberty, for humanity, and 
for the succor of the suffering and the oppressed. 

Personally, Mr. President, I regret that I can not find in the 
Cuban situation an independent government such as I can vote to 
recognize. I wish I could. For when the time of final adjust- 
ment shall come there is danger in these days of syndicates and 
commercialism and reorganizations that there will be found the 
men who play and trade on human liberties as they do on loans 
and chattels, who will seek either to aggrandize this property for 
the national uses at a price, or seek to syndicate it in some form 
whereby commissions may be realized. To-day we stand ap- 
proved in the minds of every humane man in Europe because we 
stand for humanity and liberty. And there we must stand till 
the end and after the end. if we would win their respect and pre- 
serve our own. 

Mr. President, when the day of final settlement comes and the 

issue has been finally closed, we must still stand as a nation, 

strong, self centered, and humane, which heard the appeal of the 

suffering across the shallow waters of the Gulf and could not turn 

a deaf ear to the cry of the oppressed and the downtrodden. There 

is nothing nobler at the close of the nineteenth century than a 

great country, with everything to sacrifice and nothing to gain, 

standing up for human liberty and the relief of suffering. No 
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concert of Europe chokes our utterance or strangles our voice. As 
a free people we can listen to their cries and heed them. And, 
Mr. President, serious as is this crisis, and great as are the dangers 
that grow out of the steps which we have taken, I am unwilling 
to believe that the claim will ever hereafter be made in the Senate 
or elsewhere that, having expended our blood and treasure for the 
sake of a suffering people, we should seize their fertile lands and 
annex them to our own as a recompense. 

It has been said upon the floor of the Senate, and it has been 
heard much elsewhere of late, that unless a nation fights it decays 
and deteriorates; that — 

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails; 

that it is essential to the race that it raise its young on wars, or 
else it goes to decay. If that is true — and I do not believe it — it is 
a pitiful statement to follow two thousand years of the teachings 
of Christ; and if it is true, it applies to a contest with equals. 

Spain has a population of 16,000,000 of people and we have 
nearly 75,000,000. For three years Spain has drained her resources 
in men and money to the same extent as if we in three years had 
sent a million men, who had never come back, and a billion dol- 
lars in money to a colony 3,000 miles from the United States. 
This is the country upon which we are asked to whet our courage. 
It is as if we kicked a cripple whose crutch might hurt us until 
we took it away and invoked upon ourselves the plaudits of the 
world as a people of bravery and of daring. 

Mr. President, we have heard on the floor of this House again 
and again denunciation of the Spaniards as cowards. From Alva 
and "stout Cortez" until to-day the Spaniard has been brutal in 
conduct, but courageous and brave. When we enter upon this 
war we do not want to befool ourselves either with the idea that 
we are fighting cowards or a foe our equal in numbers and re- 
sources. 

No, Mr. President, this war is one which can bring us no ma- 
terial gain. It will bring us the loss of millions of dollars in our 
commerce. It will sweep our ships from the seas. It will create 
unrest in business. It will destroy industries. It will be followed 
by that lessening in morality which always accompanies the con- 
clusion of a war. We will leave thousands of our young men 

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dead of fever or by the bullet in the tropics in the Island of Cuba, 
and we shall be fortunate if we are not compelled to face serious 
complications with other European countries. 

All these things we must count in advance, and we have counted 
them. And when the day of the result shall come and Cuba is 
free, as we must make her free, we will have fought a country 
which can never indemnify us by land, for we want no land be- 
yond our border; a country which can never indemnify us in 
money, for she has got no money. We must find our only satis- 
faction, and it must be the supreme satisfaction of a free people, 
in this, that we have poured out our blood and our treasures to 
relieve the cry of suffering humanity. 

The war which is already upon us, whatever the phraseology of 
our resolutions, must be fought because it is the manifest destiny 
of this Republic to stand forever upon the Western Hemisphere a 
sentinel of liberty. It must come, because if we fail to listen to 
the voice of the suffering or the cry of the downtrodden upon this 
continent, we shall be untrue to those principles of liberty, hu- 
manity, and Christianity upon which this country is founded as 

upon a rock. [Applause in the galleries.] 
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